Acts 9:1-9
Why persecutest thou me
The voice does not ask about the church, it asks about itself. Three days blind in Damascus, neither eating nor drinking, before anyone comes.
People of the Bible
Paul
Held the coats at a stoning, and wrote most of the letters the church has read ever since.
Also called Saul of Tarsus
He introduces himself by his credentials when he needs to: circumcised the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee, taught at the feet of Gamaliel. He also introduces himself as the chief of sinners and as one born out of due time, and both descriptions are about the same three years, when he was going from house to house hauling men and women to prison. The road to Damascus interrupts a journey he was making with letters of arrest in his hand.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Paul
- 01
- 02
Acts 13:1-3
Separate me Barnabas and Saul
The sending happens at Antioch, not Jerusalem, and by a church of prophets and teachers with African and Cyrenian names. The first journey starts from there.
- 03
Acts 16:9-10
Come over into Macedonia
A vision of a man asking for help redirects the mission into Europe. Luke’s narration changes to we in the very next verse.
- 04
Acts 17:22-31
To the unknown God
On Mars’ hill he preaches from an altar inscription and quotes their own poets. Some mock, some delay, and a few believe.
- 05
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
My grace is sufficient for thee
He asks three times for the thorn to be taken and is refused three times. The refusal is the most quoted answer to prayer in his letters.
- 06
Acts 28:30-31
In his own hired house
Acts ends with him under guard in Rome, receiving all that came in, preaching with all confidence, no man forbidding him. The last word of the book is that adverb.
Why it matters
What follows is thirty years of walking. Three missionary journeys, a fourth voyage in chains, shipwreck, riots, thirty-nine lashes five times, a night and a day in the deep, and thirteen letters that argue the whole thing out: that the promise to Abraham was always for the nations, that the law was a schoolmaster, that there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. He is thrown out of more cities than any other man in the book and keeps writing to them afterwards as if nothing had happened.
16 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
